No Longer Freaked Out by the Plagues

When I was growing up I thought
Exodus and Revelation are two of the creepiest booksof the Bible because of the plagues.I’m not sure if teachers and parents taught this to guilt me into being a good girl or if they themselves were scared
and just passed their fears on to me.

They stated these facts: you disobey God, He hardens your heart, and then (as if life without hope in God wasn’t bleak enough) God torments you with reptiles, bugs, blood and eventually death. Who wouldn’t want to come along for such a ride?

From my childish perspective, God was a merciless deity cruelly punishing Pharaoh and the Egyptians for being bad guys. The plagues scared me more than anything else because I was taught that God would send such plagues again in my lifetime just before Jesus comes. This contributed to me being afraid of Jesus coming.

My parents once read a story to me about the oldest Hebrew child who couldn’t sleep because he kept asking his father to check to make sure there was blood on the door post. We had no blood! We didn’t kill lambs or eat the fatted calf–we were vegetarians. It all seemed so arbitrary and the only way to survive was to disassociate from that kind of God. I was the oldest in my family and I wondered what kind of God would kill the oldest child.

Every time my dad read the headlines and somberly announced to the family that we needed to get our hearts right “because Jesus is coming and it’s sooner than we think,” I was left sleeplessly shaking in my bed.

A few years ago, I discovered God was NOT on an arbitrary tormenting and killing rampage that I had formerly imagined. He was actually creating boundaries to protect His people.

God used one tree for the boundary to keep Satan from harassing Adam and Eve at all the other trees in the garden. They crossed the boundary and invited Satan into our world, God had to do some drastic things.

By sending the plagues, God was erecting new boundaries to show ignorant people He is the Creator and only God. He used the plagues to expose the impotence and futility of all the false gods of Egypt because He was trying to set people free from believing in imaginary gods who were non-existent and could never help them.

On that night I will pass through the land of Egyptand strike down every firstborn sonand firstborn male animal in the land of Egypt.I will execute judgmentagainst all the gods of Egypt,for I am the LORD!-Exodus 12:12

Wow! That changes things! I’ve read several sources who explain this but this morning I was reading one a blog by Kelley Lorencin and I felt she did a great breakdown of what each plague did to expose each god, so I will share her words:

“Did you realize that each Egyptian plague was designed to humiliate and expose as frauds the most prominent gods in Egypt?

1. The plague of the Nile turned to blood was a direct affront to Hapi, the lord of the fishes, birds, and marshes. It also targeted Osiris, the god of the underworld. The Egyptians believed that the Nile was his bloodstream. (Perhaps that’s why God literally turned it to blood!)

2. The plague of frogs was designed to expose Heqt, the goddess of birth, who was always depicted with the head and body of a frog. To even accidentally kill a frog was a crime punishable by death in Egypt. Yet, after God sent this plague, the people had to heap the decaying bodies of frogs in great piles.

3. The plague of lice exposed Geb, great god of the earth, as a fraud.

4. The plague of flies humiliated Beelzebub, prince of the air, whose “ears” were flies.

5. The plague of cattle disease targeted Apis, one of Egypt’s most prominent gods (who was represented as a bull), and Hathor, the cow-headed goddess of the desert. (She was also considered the mother of Pharaoh.)

6. The plague of boils humiliated Imhotep, the god of medicine, who was powerless to help the people against such a terrible affliction. It was also an affront to Serapis, the deity responsible for healing.

7. The plague of hail destroyed the belief that Nut was in charge of the sky.

8. The plague of locusts targeted two gods—Isis and Seth—who were in charge of protecting crops.

9. The plague of darkness signaled the death of Ra, the great sun god. He was the most-favored god and considered the most powerful. (He was also considered the father of Pharaoh.)

10. The plague of the firstborn was not only against Pharaoh, but all the gods of Egypt (Ex 12:12). This is because the Egyptian firstborn were dedicated to the priesthood. Surely, if there were any gods in Egypt, they would protect those who were charged with attending to them in their temples. Thus, the death of all the firstborn in Egypt proved that either there were no Egyptian gods at all, or if there were, they were totally impotent.”

God has often been given a bad rap. Contrary to popular belief, He never acts in an arbitrary or random or power hungry way. God does these strange acts to expose the lies of Satan and set people free. Just realizing this has set me free.

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8 comments

Cheri, Yesterday at church I heard a “doom and gloom” end time sermon, scary stuff!! One thing that really hit me was the belief that at some “unknown time” our “probation” is going to close!! It seems we as a church are still in Egypt when it comes to our picture of God! I DO hear sermons about a “loving” God BUT when it comes to end-time stuff its all about God’s vengeful judgements and BBQing people! The “fear” factor is still very much alive in the church! I don’t think it will ever change because it is so ingrained into the mind-set of most Adventists! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I’m always blessed keep it coming we need it!!!

The fallacy of focusing on probation closing is that we place our choice to follow God into the future with added fear and dread, when we could actually be walking with Jesus today and experiencing His peace.

The end of probation will only reveal the choices that we are making today. Should we be concerned about being right with God? Of course, but why put it off into the future? Why not get right with Him today not out of fear, but out of respect and love for what He has done for us? If we stop putting it off into the future, we can begin our healing TODAY and we can stop worrying about probation closing because we love God and do the things He asks of us.

A lot of people worry about standing without an intercessor, but Jesus said He will never leave us. Once we have made our choices there will be no need for intercession–we will either be united with God or against Him at that point.

It really set me free! There are several books written about this. One is an old one written by a Baptist minister called, “Moses and the gods of Egypt.” EGW also speaks of it. I was floored when I discovered this angle.

‘A lot of people worry about standing without an intercessor, but Jesus said He will never leave us. Once we have made our choices there will be no need for intercession–we will either be united with God or against Him at that point.’
Just to clarify intercession…some think that Jesus is pleading to God for our salvation. But is that what He is really doing? Isn’t He pleading with us to come to Him…He and God are one is desire for us to be saved. At the end of probation there will be none left who are willing to listen to His pleading to come to Him, and many are making that decision today, right now. But if we keep putting off coming to Jesus and ignoring He call, soon we will no long hear Him and we will never make the decision to be at one with him…atonement…set right in our understanding of God and a renewed desire to be with Him. Come while you hear His call as He intercedes for you, against what the world is trying to offer and entice you to follow. Only He offers life, and true love.

Yes, thank you for explaining this Lisa. And we might add that the word at-one-ment meant just that in the original meaning. It makes much more sense when we look at the life and teachings of Jesus to know that He came to bring us into unity or at-one-ment with God instead of the newer interpretation of atonement which usually means appeasement. To fully understand this, I believe we need to take a serious look at what Jesus prayed to the Father in John 17.

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As a survivor of childhood abuse, I finally discovered narcissism and how it affects every member of the family. If you’ve just discovered what narcissism entails, you have my sympathy, but relax, you’ll soon learn to negotiate all the pitfalls and move from surviving to thriving. Don’t let the Narcissist and Flying Monkeys get you down, because knowledge is power and it’s now your turn to rise!